# Japan Forum > Japanese Language & Linguistics >  Amusing mistakes while speaking Japanese

## Maciamo

I guess that it has happened to any foreigners in Japan or learning Japanese to use one word instead of another similar one while trying to express yourself in nihongo. Sometimes that leads to farcical situations.

Once, while fatigue had taken the best of my mental faculties, I wanted to say "okosanaide" (NȂ = dont't wake her/him/me up) but said "okasanaide" (ƂȂ), which means "don't rape me".  :Shocked: 

Did anything like that ever happen to you ?

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## PaulTB

> Once, while fatigue had taken the best of my mental faculties, I wanted to say "okosanaide" (起こさないで = dont't wake her/him/me up) but said "okasanaide" (犯さないで ), which means "don't rape me". 
> 
> Did anything like that ever happen to you ?


I once used ペロペロ when I meant ペラペラ ^^;

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## mad pierrot

LOL, who did you say that to?

 :Laughing:

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## Ewok85

ς instead of ς

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## Brooker

When I first arrived in Japan, I was at a restaurant flipping through my travel dictionary to order. After I ordered the waiter gave me a strange look and almost chuckled. I looked back to my dictionary and realized I'd just asked him if I could have the "fondle". Luckily, he brought me soup instead.

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## Kama

What is xxHI think it'd be a good thing to translate your own mistakes... XD

At univeristy where in my group is about 20 people, mistakes are quite common. the funny ones that I remember are:

uX (ugly girl) instead of oX (bus). Luckily, it was only at lesson...  :Smilie: 

* (candlestand) instead of * (homework) [shokudai/shukudai I don't understand what's wrong it's not displaying correctly.]

w̒j (student's man) instead of j̊w (male student).

I myself don't remember such thing happening to me.

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## PaulTB

> What is xxHI think it'd be a good thing to translate your own mistakes... XD


That was yy not xx.

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## Kama

> That was yy not xx.


 :Sorry:  

Ok!! XD I didn't see properly. I'm short-sighted...  :Laughing:  

Anyway, what does it means? I don't know onomatopoeia too well...

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## PaulTB

> I don't understand what's wrong it's not displaying correctly.


It's a known forum glitch. (Although I don't know when it's going to get fixed).

As a work around you can try selecting Western European encoding *before* typing your post.

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## MikeH85

to finally answer your question, Kama: yy means licking.

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## Maciamo

> When I first arrived in Japan, I was at a restaurant flipping through my travel dictionary to order. After I ordered the waiter gave me a strange look and almost chuckled. I looked back to my dictionary and realized I'd just asked him if I could have the "fondle". Luckily, he brought me soup instead.


Didn't you confuse "chikan" s (gropping) and "chikin" `L (chicken) ? Good you were not a girl.  :Sorry:  

Imagine yourself working as a waiter in a restaurant in Japan. You are learning Japanese but have just learned "chikan" today by seeing the warning in the metro. A beautiful girl comes, and without checking the menu ask you for "chikan" (actually chikin, but your ears aren't used to Japanese yet). What do you do ?  :Giggle:

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## MikeM

> Imagine yourself working as a waiter in a restaurant in Japan. You are learning Japanese but have just learned "chikan" today by seeing the warning in the metro. A beautiful girl comes, and without checking the menu ask you for "chikan" (actually chikin, but your ears aren't used to Japanese yet). What do you do ?


haha... things like that I am afraid of! 
 :Bluush:

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## tengpow

Heh, when I first started studying, my teacher asked me, "ȂH" I misunderstood her and I answered "͂AȂ" 

A friend of mine was also in a Lawsons convenience store and asked the clerk for ",ӂ" rather than  . I know there's more but I seem to be blanking at the moment. I've also got quite a collection of my Japanese student's English mistakes.

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## Keiichi

> Heh, when I first started studying, my teacher asked me, "ȂH" I misunderstood her and I answered "͂AȂ"


 :Laughing:   :Laughing:   :Laughing:  That sounded funny.

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## Brooker

Here's another....

I was at a bar in Japan talking to a Brazilian guy who didn't speak English. I don't speak Portugese, but both of us could speak a little Japanese and and little Spanish. I wanted to say "Where is...." ("donde esta" in Spanish, "doko desu ka" in Japanese) and mixed the two languages together and said, "Doko esta". After hearing that, he nearly fell out of his chair laughing. It was quite a multicultural evening.

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## playaa

Haha, all these are great! I am sure I will have plenty when I come back from Japan.  :Smilie:

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## soe

> Here's another....
> 
> I was at a bar in Japan talking to a Brazilian guy who didn't speak English. I don't speak Portugese, but both of us could speak a little Japanese and and little Spanish. I wanted to say "Where is...." ("donde esta" in Spanish, "doko desu ka" in Japanese) and mixed the two languages together and said, "Doko esta". After hearing that, he nearly fell out of his chair laughing. It was quite a multicultural evening.


  :Blush:  yeah, nanka okashii yo. i used to mixed japanese to my motherlanguage too, and my friend cursing at me when i did that. It became a habit though, why dont they understand  :Okashii:

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## lineartube

The funniest/awckward that happened to me regarding a "mistake", which really wasn't, was while I was having dinner with a female Japanase friend and at one point I made a toast, in Portuguese and said "Tchin-Tchin", which made her blush first and laugh secondly... which made me curious about what had just happened, which she replied that tchin (or tchin-tchin, I don't know. Been sometime.) was Japanese slang for a certain protruding male part.
She did beat me though on "the most embarassing cultural faux pas", when she tried to say in Portuguese, a female citizen of Hong Kong and surprisingly ended up saying a Portuguese slang word for a certain un-protruding female part.

Too much green wine, that day.  :Laughing: 

One thing I can say about this is that this type of cultural clashes can break the ice... if people are tolerant and patient and willing to recognize an innocent mistake for what it was.

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